Season 23 - Where Angels Fear to Tread (1993-1994)
It always feels odd to me when Masterpiece airs a movie that was a theatrical release. Because they weren't involved in making it so why are they airing it? I mean, there's a cynical side of me that wonders exactly how involved PBS is in any shows that air on Masterpiece aside from giving them money, but that's beside the point. Though this question does arise more and more as the number of shows in a given season of Masterpiece contract while other venues for British television expand. But at least we can say that airing an adaptation of E.M. Forster's first novel is on brand. As is the cast. The problem is that this adaptation had to make an imperfect book into a perfect film. And they partially succeeded. They were able to grasp what Forster was trying and failed to do with his book. The film is a tour de force comedy of manners satirizing societal values. It's an interesting conceit. Because it's like taking the most staid of Masterpiece shows and then filtering it through the lens of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Despite the death and despair, there is never a time when the film takes itself too seriously. The entire thing is done with a nudge and a wink, wherein we, the audience, are in on the joke. We are there to laugh at and make fun of the drawing room foibles of the characters and the petty lives these people live wherein an inlaid box that was "lent" not "given" is more important than anything else. The movie is able to effect these changes from a lackluster book to a fun movie by the simple expedient of streamlining the story and adding a little "movie magic." The movie magic is that instead of showing the deplorable and unseemly side of the Italian town of Monteriano that Forster focused on everything has been covered in pixie dust. Lilia's house isn't a ramshackle affair, it's actually quite nice. The town is picturesque. We see the world through a cinematic haze that makes everything that much nicer. Also by the magic of cinema the language barrier is whisked away. Instead of having laborious misunderstandings everyone seems to magically know what everyone else means. Sure it's a little unrealistic, especially in the case of the ignorant Lilia, but it's expedient and let's the story focus on what is important, Judy Davis as Harriet Herriton. She raised this film to new heights. She knew just how to deliver her lines and knew when a pause or a look would be better than something more dramatic and showy. While this film was made just at the beginning of her ascendancy to independent film darling, the epoch of The Ref being three years in the future, she is the star here. The way she keeps harping on about her lent inlaid box, the way she won't share a conveyance with an overweight woman who turns out to be a famous opera star, her trying to shush the excited audience at the opera, every line, every look, every interaction with her fellow cast shows that she was born to play this role. More than anyone else she understands the humor, though dark, that the film is trying to bring forth from the source material. She "gets" the film and takes the character of Harriet, that is basically a catalyst in the book, and makes her fully three dimensional and so wonderful that you are counting the minutes until she returns to the screen. She is why you watch this film. She is all.
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